


hold onto your voice, hold onto your breath

by unicornpoe



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dean Winchester Has Self-Esteem Issues, Dean Winchester Saves Castiel from the Empty, Episode Fix-It: s15e19 Inherit the Earth, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Pining, Post-Episode: s15e18 Despair, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Vague Suicidal Ideation, dean and cas having orpheus and eurydice vibes for 7k words, loose mythology symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-26 21:34:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30112371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unicornpoe/pseuds/unicornpoe
Summary: You won’t be able to stop me,Dean thinks into the silence.Just take me, please, take me instead—EYE FOR AN EYE,says the Empty.Dean is on his knees in his bedroom, elbows on his mattress like he thought he might pray.The voice fills Dean’s mind as slowly as cold oil, and drips down the back of his neck.TOOTH FOR A TOOTH.*Dean makes a deal.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 21
Kudos: 203





	hold onto your voice, hold onto your breath

**Author's Note:**

> quick note: jack isn't god in this, but chuck was still defeated, which i didn't bother to write a solution for because i know we're all just here for the gay shit anyway. enjoy!

_ Don’t make a noise, _

_ don’t leave the room until I come back from the dead for you. I will _

_ come back from the dead for you. _

_ - _ Richard Siken

  
  


The end of the world is a black rent in the universe, closing tight like a mouth. 

Slick like oil or a spill of tar. The Empty swallows Cas down in one clench. 

Dean can’t breathe after he’s gone. 

*

_ Give him back,  _ Dean thinks into the silence.  _ I’ll do anything—  _

_ * _

Sam finds him on the floor a day later, and there must be something on Dean’s face—he can feel it frozen like a mask, he is so very cold—because it’s terror in Sam’s eyes when he drops to his knees by Dean’s side, when he takes Dean’s frigid hands in his. 

He’s speaking, but Dean can’t hear him. Every sound is the same: a long unbroken line. 

“He’s gone,” Dean says eventually. 

Sam stops talking. His eyes are wet, and tired. 

Dean’s voice crawls out of his ruined throat on unsteady legs. “He saved me.”

Sam doesn’t ask Dean what happened. He wraps his arms around Dean’s shoulders and pulls him in, the only warm thing in the room. 

*

God is a tight hot handful of dust across an empty road, and then God is nothing. 

They win. With their grubby hands and their mouths tasting of blood, they win. 

Jack brings those that have been lost back, standing in the bunker with power shaking the slim line of his shoulders. Jack brings them all back—and Dean watches Sam fold Eileen in close to his chest, Dean watches reunions happen like a movie of someone else’s life—

All except one. 

There’s a bottle of whiskey in Dean’s hand when Jack catches up to him in the hallway, a glass in the other; Dean grips them tight. Looks at him. 

He is eons old and he is achingly young. He looks so damn much like his father. 

“Dean,” says Jack. “I’m still trying to reach him.”

When Sam had told Jack what happened to Cas, gently, with his hands on his shoulders, Jack hadn’t cried. Jack had said he knew. Had felt Cas’s absence like a shift of something deep inside himself. 

Now, Jack looks at Dean with his chin tilted up and sorrow in the shape of his mouth, unbested by grief but changed by it. 

He shouldn’t have to feel any of this. 

“I know you are,” Dean murmurs now. 

He is surprised that the words aren’t ashy on his tongue. He is surprised that he feels no anger when he looks at Jack, who could bring everyone back except for the one person Dean wants so badly he’s doubled over with it; Jack, who used to have Lucifer crouched behind his eyes when Dean looked at him, and now has only Castiel. 

It isn’t Jack’s fault that he can’t reach Cas—it’s Dean’s fault that he let him go in the first place. 

“You did good,” Dean tells him. His hands are full—he switches the bottle to the crook of his arm and he squeezes the nape of Jack’s neck with his free hand, gently like he’ll shatter if Dean presses too hard. “Get some rest.”

Dean wishes he could offer more comfort. Cas was Jack’s  _ father.  _ Cas was Dean’s—was— 

“Thank you, Dean,” Jack says, solemn. His mouth flickers into a smile, brief and fleeting, and he leaves Dean’s hand feeling empty when he walks away. 

Dean waits until he’s down the hallway and disappeared into his room, and then Dean grips the bottle again, holding the neck too tightly, and slips through his own door. 

It slams shut, a death knell. 

Dean abandons any pretense of moderation by skipping the glass altogether and drinking straight from the bottle—too fast, long, burning pulls, an attempt to drown out the swell of something he can feel clawing up the hollow of his throat before it reaches a sober mind. 

He lowers it when his hands start shaking, when the pressure in his lungs is a desperate twist. Dean’s face is wet. Dean looks at the glass in his hand, and then Dean throws it at the wall. 

It shatters, glass raining down over his pillow and the rumpled mess of his unmade bed. The sound doesn’t satisfy anything inside him, and neither does the sight, and now he—he doesn’t have any fucking place to sleep. 

Not that he would. Not that he’s been able to since the Empty took Cas three days ago, leaving Dean with nothing. 

None of them know what Cas said. 

Dean can’t repeat it out loud. Hell—Dean can barely repeat it to himself, will only let himself think about it when he’s drinking with the goal of passing out and won’t hafta contemplate the words for long. 

Like right now. 

Bed ruined, Dean sways for a moment in the center of the room before he lets his legs give up. He sits there on the floor, a puppet with his strings cut, an actor with no script or stage direction. He shivers from the inside out. 

_ The one thing I know I can’t have,  _ Cas had said. 

What the fuck does he know?

This is Cas’s true happiness. 

This is everything Dean has ever tried to keep from happening. 

*

_ I’ll do anything,  _ Dean thinks into the silence.  _ I will come get him out with my own two hands and you won’t be able to stop me—  _

*

They start hunting again.

Dean throws himself into it with a zeal that he hasn’t felt in... Shit. Years. He doesn’t even feel it now, not really, but hunting is a distraction: something to do with his head and his hands so he doesn’t—so he won’t—

Sam says he’s being too reckless. Dean doesn’t give a shit. 

They’re in Kentucky hunting down a werewolf, and there’s no way to prove that Dean throws himself in its path when he sees its claws extended, but that doesn’t seem to matter. 

Sam is stone cold silent as he patches Dean up. 

The thing got Dean in the ribs before Sam fired off a round between its eyes and then beheaded it while it was down, and blood soaks his t-shirt to his skin, seeps down below his waistband. If he looks down he thinks he can see bone, white-slick and red-stained beneath ripped skin; he doesn’t look down. 

He’s on the hood of the Impala, and the metal is like ice under his thighs. The night air sends a shiver down his spine. 

“Sit still,” Sam snaps. He’s angry. He hasn’t met Dean’s gaze since he made sure he wasn’t dead. 

There is a weird sort of delight bubbling under the surface of Dean’s skin, a nasty panting urge that makes him yearn for a fight. He takes a swig from the bottle of whiskey Sam handed him to dull the pain of getting sewn up, and then another, and another, until his head starts to swim. Hopes Sam sees it in the flatness of his eyes. 

If he does, he doesn’t say anything. He yanks the last stitch tight and snips close to the wound, packing everything back into the First Aid kit with sharp movements and leaving Dean to tug his shirt down. 

“Gettin’ a little slow,” Dean says. He wants somebody to yell at him. He wants somebody to hit him again, send him flying to a concrete floor on his ass—and Sammy’s the only one here. “Used to finish off a werewolf in fifteen minutes.”

Sam ignores him. It’s hard to see his features in the black of night; he moves to tuck the kit back in Baby’s glovebox, moving a little too rough. 

It ain’t enough. Dean slips down off her hood, staggering a little when his boots hit earth, and the thing in his chest shudders. 

“Don’t tell me you’re too soft to hunt now,” he says. His face is numb, hands shaking, and he drinks again to wash everything down. “You scared of somethin’ now you’re old?”

Sammy moves faster than Dean expected— _ good _ , Dean thinks, vicious,  _ finally—  _

He doesn’t hit Dean. He takes the whisky from him, leaving Dean reaching, and instead of flint in his eyes there’s only sorrow. 

All of the fight leaves Dean in a rush. His eyes are hot, hot, and the black ice sky sways. 

“Of course I’m scared, you son of a bitch,” Sam says. “I’m scared of losing you, and Eileen, and Jack, and everybody else I care about. I miss Cas every day, and I can’t go through something like that with you—“

“Don’t,” Dean says, more rasp than voice. He flinches hard, and he knows Sam sees it. He wants to be home. He wants to close his eyes and never have to open them to this reality again. 

Dean’s blood is still on Sam’s hands.

Dean thinks Sam knows. Thinks he must be able to see it, written all over his face, in the way Dean’s gotta drink himself to sleep and can’t go into a certain room in the bunker without breaking down. In the way Dean can’t even say Cas’s name out loud. 

“Don’t, man,” Dean whispers. 

“I know you miss him,” Sam says—just as soft, but the words slice Dean anyway. “But you know he’d want you to take care of yourself.” 

Dean peels off his ruined flannel, presses its clean edge into Sammy’s grip. Wipes at Sam’s knuckles, and then lets his touch fall away. 

He knows what Sam wants him to say. He wants promises—that Dean will watch out for himself, that Dean will snap out of this, chin up, move on. He wants Dean to be happy. 

He wants things Dean can’t give. 

“You drive,” Dean says. He tosses Baby’s keys. They sail over to Sam in a long clean arc. 

Nobody talks on the drive home. 

*

_ You won’t be able to stop me,  _ Dean thinks into the silence.  _ Just take me, please, take me instead— _

_ * _

_ EYE FOR AN EYE,  _ says the Empty. 

*

Dean is on his knees in his bedroom, elbows on his mattress like he thought he might pray. 

The voice fills Dean’s mind as slowly as cold oil, and drips down the back of his neck.

*

_ TOOTH FOR A TOOTH.  _

*

It takes Cas’s shape in the corner.

It smiles at Dean like a knife’s edge. 

Dean shakes at the foot of his bed. The Empty wears Cas badly, like an ill-fitting suit: stiff and unaligned, as if there’s something too sharp beneath the layer only Dean can see. When it smiles at him, low and wide, there’s only darkness beyond the cage of its teeth. 

_ HELLO, DEAN,  _ the Empty says. 

The Empty’s mouth moves, but its voice echoes only in Dean’s head. Probably so Sam or Jack won’t hear and come running. 

Good. Dean doesn’t want to have to fight to keep them from stopping him. 

“Give him back,” Dean rasps. 

The Empty tilts its head, a gesture so similar to Cas and yet so very, very wrong that Dean feels bile rise to the back of his throat. 

_ DEAN, DEAN,  _ the Empty murmurs.  _ YOU KNOW THAT ISN’T HOW THIS WORKS.  _

Dean does know. 

“What’s it gonna take?” Dean asks. His throat is raw, tight and burning. “I ain’t giving up. I’ll ask you every day until I die, and after that I’ll crawl my way out of Hell until I find you and ask you then. You will  _ never  _ know peace from me.”

It looks at him like he’s small.  _ I AM MORE VAST THAN YOUR COMPREHENSION,  _ the Empty says.  _ THE PATHETIC LONGING OF ONE HUMAN IS NOT ENOUGH TO BOTHER ME.  _

“Oh yeah?” Dean says. He forces himself up to standing, and his knees are weak but he doesn’t stink down again. “I’m pretty fucking sure my  _ pathetic longing  _ is what got you here in the first place, pal.” Dean’s heartbeat tastes like blood. “Don’t try that shit with me. You came here to make a deal—let’s make a goddamn deal.”

The Empty lifts Cas’s eyebrows. Dryly surprised, like it didn’t think Dean had it in him. 

Dean hasn’t even come close to the end of what he has in him. 

_ IF YOU CAN FIND HIM, I’LL LET YOU LEAD HIM OUT,  _ it says.  _ ON ONE CONDITION.  _

“Anything,” Dean says. It’s stupid of him, surely a path to destruction. He means it entirely. “Anything.”

The Empty is delighted, and Dean’s heart sinks even as it beats with the first real hope he’s had since Cas was taken. 

_ ONCE YOU ENTER, YOU MAY NOT SPEAK OUT LOUD UNTIL YOU’RE OUT AGAIN.  _

Dean stares. 

He isn’t naive. This isn’t even his first rodeo when it comes to bargaining with an eldritch being—he knows it’s a trap. Gotta be. 

“That’s it?” 

The Empty’s smile is rigid, is smooth as plastic, is nothing like the man it’s trying to emulate. 

_ I BELIEVE YOU’LL FIND IT SUFFICIENTLY DIFFICULT.  _

Cas’s cadence is stilted on its tongue, wielded like a weapon. Dean’s hands are squeezed so tightly that his nails bite into the meat of his palm. 

“What’s the catch?” Dean spits. “What’s supposed to keep me from joggin’ in there and singing  _ The Sound of Music _ at the top of my lungs?”

The Empty rolls its eyes.  _ SPEAK, AND I GET TO KEEP ONE OF YOU. MY CHOICE.  _

He thinks of Jack and Sam, looking every day for a way to get Cas back. He thinks of Sam asking him to be careful on the side of that road in Kentucky. 

_ Everything you have ever done,  _ Cas had said,  _ you have done for love.  _

“No,” Dean says, and takes a sour kind of pleasure in the way the Empty’s mouth goes flat with displeasure. “He gets out no matter what. I speak, you keep me.” 

_ AH, THE WINCHESTERS. SELF-SACRIFICING. STUPID.  _

There is a pause, long enough that Dean can hear himself breathing ragged. 

Dean watches it, unwavering. He thinks of Cas’s deal, and wonders if the Empty is, too. 

_ FINE,  _ the Empty says eventually.  _ IF YOU WISH TO DOOM YOURSELF.  _

Dean smiles, sharp and savage. “Let me in.”

*

The portal slices open in the middle of Dean’s bedroom, a gaping maw. 

When he glances back at the corner, the Empty wearing Cas is gone. 

“I’m coming,” Dean says out loud as he peers into the inkyness, searching for anything—a hint of movement, a glimmer of color—that never comes. He tastes the words in the dip of his tongue, knowing they’ll be the last he speaks for a while. Hopefully not forever. “Hold on, Cas.”

He casts one last look back over his shoulder at his closed door, hoping against hope that Sam or Jack doesn’t come looking for him and end up putting themselves in danger. 

And then he turns around. And then he steps through. 

Instantly it is cold like Dean has never felt before. Colder than the dead of winter—an absence of heat. 

An absence of heat, of light. Of sound. 

_ BE QUICK,  _ the Empty breathes into his head.  _ AND BE QUIET.  _

Dean moves through the darkness with his hands stretched out before him, eyes straining to see anything that might give him a hint of how to find Cas in all this nothing. He walks as quickly as he can, but it doesn’t seem to be making a difference: with nothing but utter black around him on all sides, there’s no visual cue to note the distance with. 

He counts his heartbeats to mark the time. 

_ One. Two. Three.  _

After a while, the cold slows him down. It weighs on his joints, drapes itself over his shoulders and down his back. He shakes with it. 

He tucks his hands up under his arms, beneath the folds of his flannel, and he keeps going. 

The possibility that he’s gonna walk right by Cas—that he’s already passed him, left him back there in this vast barren nothing—has him peering so close that his eyes grow wet, has him aching to say Cas’s name. If his heartbeat hadn’t already gone sluggish with the cold it would be racing with fear. If he wasn’t shuffling at this point, trudging through shadows that want to drag him down, he would break out into a run. 

_ Hold on,  _ Dean thinks again.  _ Hold on, Cas, I’m coming, I’m coming, I’m coming.  _

Dean has lost track of his pulse when something catches at the edge of his tired gaze. 

There’s a glow a few yards in front of him, softly golden. Faint, but present. 

Dean forces himself through those last few stumbling steps, and then he falls to his knees at Cas’s side. 

He’s curled into himself like a half moon, his eyes closed, his hands clasped tight before his chest. His coat fans over him like a blanket. Like a pair of wings. He is so still. 

Every part of Dean’s being longs to reach out to him—but something has him immobile, frozen there on his knees with his head bowed, with his spine aching, with everything he has ever wanted stretched out there before him if only he could lift his useless fucking hands and  _ hold on _ — 

Cas blinks his eyes open.

He doesn’t seem surprised to see Dean here, or relieved. He watches Dean with none of the avid closeness he’s always bestowed him, with none of the soft regard. He’s blank. 

“Please stop,” he says softly. 

Even though the words are terrifying, the voice saying them warms Dean down to a place nothing’s been able to reach in weeks. 

He opens his mouth to say Cas’s name—and then he snaps it shut again. 

No speaking. 

Dean crawls forward on his hands and his knees and then, with his heart making a home in his throat, Dean cups Cas’s face in his palms. 

He burns like a star. Always has. 

Dean wrestles down a sob as he soothes his thumbs over the bags beneath Cas’s eyes, as he touches the softness of his hair with questing fingertips. He’s here. God, he’s here, and Dean—Dean missed him so much he almost couldn’t do it. Any of it. Almost couldn’t live. 

He’s shivering hard now, wracking things, and Cas must be able to feel it; even blank as he is, his brow dimples with concern. 

But he still doesn’t touch Dean back. Still doesn’t smile.

“I know you aren’t him,” Cas murmurs. “I know it isn’t possible.”

It’s like a punch to the chest. For a minute he can’t breathe, gaping down at Cas, finally in his hands after all these weeks. All these years. 

He understands why the Empty gave him this ultimatum now. He wonders how many times it’s taunted Cas like this: how many times it’s crashed in to break a heart Dean knows he himself has already had a hand in breaking far too often. 

_ You sick son of a bitch,  _ Dean thinks viciously, and he hopes it can hear him.  _ You ruthless bastard.  _

Cas’s eyes have slipped closed again, his mouth turned down at the corners. Dean’s losing him. 

No. Never again. 

He slips a hand away from Cas’s face and brings it down to where his fingers are woven above his breastbone. Cas’s eyelashes flutter when Dean lifts one of his hands, but they don’t part; when Dean brings Cas’s palm to his mouth Cas makes a quiet sound, small and sad. 

_ Cas,  _ Dean mouths soundlessly against his skin. His teeth are chattering, his lips are trembling. It’s gotta be enough regardless.  _ It’s me. I promise. Please let me get you home.  _

Cas looks at him again. He’s smiling now, the small, lovely one, his eyebrows at a gentle slope and his mouth a soft curve. It’s desperately sad. 

Cas still doesn’t believe him. 

“You’re trying to upset me,” Cas says. There’s a waver to his voice, but still he smiles. This damn martyr. This self-sacrificing asshole, unable to understand that he deserves something good— _ everything  _ good. “But it won’t work. I don’t want him here. I will exist for the rest of time perfectly happy knowing that he’s alive, and loved. I regret many things about the life I lived,” he continues, and there is conviction in his eyes now. “But I will never regret having saved him, and I will  _ never  _ regret loving him.”

Dean is bowled over again, undone. Part of him must have wondered this whole time if Cas would take it all back after Dean found him; part of him believed Cas should. 

He deserves someone a million times better than the man Dean can even dream of being. 

Dean ain’t leaving here without him. 

He’s moving before he’s even made the decision, stretching himself out at Cas’s side as close as he can get without letting go of their hands. It’s almost unbearably cold now—the floor feels like a sheet of ice, the air scraps at his lungs when he breathes it in—but he doesn’t give a shit. He curls up close to Cas, their hands clasped between their chests, and smothers a sound at the twinge across his ribs from the werewolf attack that hasn’t fully healed. 

Cas stares at him. He doesn’t look hopeful—confused, maybe. It’s something. 

_ Not gonna leave you,  _ Dean mouths. Fuck, he hopes Cas can work that out. He wants to ask Cas why the Empty would bother with a projection of Dean now that Cas has said he doesn’t even want Dean down here, but it’s so cold, and he’s so tired. He curls his hands around Cas’s, and he tangles their legs together on the smooth black ground.  _ Never again.  _

For a moment Cas simply looks at him, unblinking and close, and having that gaze wash over him once more makes Dean’s throat tight. 

“You’re shivering,” Cas says. There’s not much inflection to the statement, but Dean catches the undertones anyway: he’s worried. He’s wondering. 

Dean just nods. He thinks if he opens his mouth again he might not be able to control what comes out of it. A laugh or a sigh or a sob. Cas’s name. 

A confession that’s a long time coming. 

He presses Cas's palms flat to his heartbeat, covering them with his own, and fights to keep his eyes open even though they’re dragging down heavy. If Cas doesn’t believe him soon, Dean  _ will  _ say his name—he’ll doom himself for Cas to be able to get outta this place, go see Jack again, and Sam. Live his life like he deserves. 

Eye for an eye, as the Empty had said. Tooth for a tooth. 

Sam and Jack will be fine. They love Cas, as a father and a brother, and Cas loves them. And as hard as it is for Dean to admit it even these days, Sammy’s—Sam’s grown up now. He’s his own man. A better man than Dean’ll ever be. He’ll be sad for a while, but he’ll be alright. 

They’ll be alright. 

Dean’s just gotta do one thing first. 

Cas’s lips part as Dean nears him, the corners of his mouth gone sweet and softly surprised. He’s breathing down here, even though he doesn’t need to. His fingers clench in the fabric of Dean’s shirt. 

His mouth is fever-warm when Dean covers it with his own. 

The kiss is slow, a gentle press. For a moment all of the wheeling turbulence within Dean settles. 

“Dean,” Cas murmurs into the breath of space between them. Dean pulls back far enough to see his eyes—those gorgeous goddamn eyes—as Cas lifts a hand. He traces a thumb along the swell of Dean’s bottom lip, as careful as if he were touching something made of glass. “Are you—you can’t really be here.”

Dean shrugs, awkward as it is horizontal, and smothers down the urge to cry that’s been building since he spotted Cas. Cas doesn’t think Dean would come for him, and Dean feels like the biggest piece of shit on the planet for ever doing anything to sow that doubt. 

“Say something,” Cas says on a whisper, coaxing Dean somehow closer with a nudge of his hand. “Please, so I know it’s you. I…”

Dean would give him anything. Dean can’t give him this. 

If Cas will follow him out, Dean will lead him. 

_ Can’t, _ he mouths, slow and clear.  _ I made a deal.  _

Cas’s frown is so grumpy that for half a second Dean almost smiles. Quickly, though, it changes to fear; he sits up and he helps Dean up with him, holding Dean’s shivering shoulders in his big palms. 

“A deal?” His voice is sharp, and Dean knows it isn’t directed toward him. It stings a bit anyway. “Dean, if I leave with you, will you be stuck here?”

Dean shakes his head so fast that Cas blurs before him, clenching Cas’s wrists tightly as if he’ll slip away if Dean lets go. 

With the life they’ve led together, it’s not an unreasonable fear. 

Cas still looks worried, but at least he seems pretty close to convinced that it’s really Dean here, and not some hollow version of his skin. Dean drifts forward and kisses him again, feeling spindly and brave, a light touch at the corner of his frown. 

Cas sighs, hands flexing on Dean’s shoulders. He turns his head slightly and meets Dean’s mouth head-on. Lingers there for a moment. 

Twelve years is a long time to love somebody silently. 

“You shouldn’t be here,” Cas tells him. He strokes his palms down Dean’s arms and then back up, working some warmth into his skin. “A human shouldn’t be able to survive here.”

He doesn’t bother reacting to that. He would fuse the two of them together if he could. He would slip into the shelter of Cas’s skin and never leave again. 

“You’re so strong, though, aren’t you?” Cas murmurs. “You always have been.”

They were kissing a handful of seconds ago, but this is what makes Dean flush. He ducks his head down, flustered, and touches the soft dip of Cas’s neck with his open lips, a not-quite kiss that has a tremor running through Cas like a faultline. 

“Dean,” Cas says, low. Dean can feel the rumble of his voice in his throat. “Let’s go home.”

*

Dean holds Cas’s hand tight enough to feel bone shifting beneath his skin as they walk back the direction Dean came.

He still glows faintly, Cas does. He’s got something pure inside of him, and he always has, and Dean thinks maybe it doesn’t have very much to do with being an angel at all. Cas is just  _ good.  _ The kinda good that feels like absolution to touch. 

And he loves Dean. 

The dark is still mostly impenetrable, but it’s easier to traverse going this direction. It lifts from their edges, and even though Dean can’t yet see an exit yet, the despair that has been curled in his chest like a small dead animal since Cas left him is starting to slip away. 

_ How do you like me now?  _ Dean thinks into the silence. 

The lack of response in his head has sharp corners. Dean smirks against the dark.

Cas squeezes his hand.  _ One. Two. Three.  _

There is no warning when they reach the end. The Empty rips down the middle and shoves them through to Dean’s bedroom floor, rough and unceremonious. 

_ DON’T COME BACK,  _ it hisses. 

Dean is blinded by the sudden light, his elbow smarts where it hit the floor, there are voices filling the room. 

Cas’s hand is still in his, and he grips it tight. 

The Empty closes behind them with a sound like a scream. 

Sam and Jack are on them immediately, Sam talking worriedly a mile a minute, Jack beaming as he vaults himself forward into Cas’s arms. Dean doesn’t have any time to orient himself before Cas pulls his hand away and uses it to gather Jack in close to his chest; his hand feels horribly empty for a moment before Sam is ducking down into his line of sight and taking Dean’s shoulders in his hands.

“—you ok? Dean? Jesus, you were gone for a whole day and we didn’t know where you were, Jack couldn’t reach you—”

The room is almost stifling in its heat after the Empty’s freeze, but Dean finds that he’s still trembling lightly anyway. He clears his throat, scraping and heavy. “I’m ok, Sam,” he says, and cuffs him on the cheek with a shaking hand, gentle. His voice is nothing but a straw-dry rasp. “Sorry I left without tellin’ you. Got an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.”

“You are so,” Sam says, shaking his head, and his eyes are red—sleeplessness or tears, or both—but he’s smiling a little as he looks back and forth from Dean’s slumped figure to Jack and Cas’s exuberant tangle. “Goddamn infuriating. C’mere.”

He pulls Dean into a tight, brisk hug. They haven’t done this for a while. It’s… it’s nice. 

Dean leans on him for a moment, and Sam holds him up. 

He can hear Cas talking softly to Jack, that low, tender tone he always takes with him: it cuts right through Dean, right down to the middle of him. He spoke to Dean like that when he realized it was really him. Dean came to find him, but Cas led Dean out of the darkness with the sound of his voice. 

“So what happened?” Sam asks, pulling back. Jack and Cas detangle, too—Dean sees it out of the corner of his eye—and Cas must be able to tell that Dean needs to be touching him right now because he reaches across the slim space between them and fits the cup of his palm over Dean’s shoulder, warm and steady and sure. “Cas, are you alright? How’d you get out of there? Did the Empty just—just let you go?”

“Jeez, Sammy, let the guy catch his breath,” Dean mutters halfheartedly. He wants Sam and Jack to leave the room. He wants to crawl over to where Cas sits with his legs crossed and his coat pooled around his thighs and climb into his lap and breathe in that soft place at the crook of his neck. It’s deeply embarrassing, and his skin itches with it. 

Cas looks weary, paler than usual, shadows dark beneath his eyes. He smiles anyway, small and true. 

“It’s alright,” Cas says kindly. His thumb moves slowly over Dean’s shirt. Jack is beaming at the two of them, wide and unabashed, and Dean can’t look at Sam without dissolving. “Dean saved me.”

God, Dean’s gonna—he—Jesus Christ. Jesus  _ Christ.  _

“I’m glad that you could find him when I couldn’t, Dean,” Jack says. 

“Hey.” Dean gives Jack his best smile, reaching out to touch his knee because it’s the nearest part of him. “You would’ve figured something out if I didn’t.”

“Perhaps,” Jack says. “Still, I’m glad it was you.”

They’re both so fucking earnest. “Yeah,” Dean says, a little rough. “Me too.”

When he catches Cas’s gaze it’s so soft that Dean feels it in his chest. 

*

They were gone for almost twenty four hours, Sam says. Time must run different in the Empty like it does in Heaven and Hell, because it didn’t feel that long when Dean was there—and at the same time it felt longer than eternity. He’s sitting on the foot of his bed, Cas pressed up close to his side because Dean won’t let go of him, and he’s so fucking exhausted that he barely keep his eye open. 

He’s hungry, too. Starving, actually—and isn’t that unfamiliar. He hasn’t felt like he could eat anything in weeks. Hasn’t felt like he has deserved to. 

It’s instinct to offer to cook for everyone, even though it’s nearly four in the morning and two of the four of them are cosmic entities who don’t need to eat and all Dean really wants is for Cas to kiss him again. It’s instinct to lead everyone into the kitchen and assemble the stuff for pancakes, the kind with cinnamon and brown sugar that Bobby used to make for him and Sam if they were lucky enough to be at his place during either of their birthdays, even though he hasn’t cooked a meal for his family in so long that guilt sours the back of his throat. It’s instinct to grab a beer from the fridge and drink it as he flips pancakes on the griddle, because he can feel Cas’s gaze like a hand on the back of his neck, because he can’t quite believe that anything happening to him right now is actually real. 

Sam and Jack and Dean eat, and even Cas has a few polite bites. Mostly he watches Dean. Mostly he watches Dean, and smiles like he—like he won the fucking lottery, when Dean shyly nudges Cas’s hand with his own. 

They’re all talking around Dean. He eats slowly, drinks slower. He wants Cas to reach out under the table and touch Dean’s thigh. His heart beats, birdwing fast. 

Jack peels off first. He hugs Cas around the neck, probably a little too tight to be comfortable; Cas sets a hand on the small of Jack’s back, eyes drifting closed. 

Dean’s throat goes tight to watch them. 

“I missed you, Castiel,” he says. 

“Jack,” Cas says. He is so happy that the corners of his eyes are crinkled up like a starburst, and it makes Dean need to grip the edge of the table so tight it hurts. “I missed you too. I am very happy to be home.”

_ Home.  _ Fuck, if that doesn’t feel like a revelation. 

He hugs Sam next, and then, in a turn of events that probably shocks no one but Dean, him. 

Jack feels slender and breakable under Dean’s rough hands. Dean squeezes him as gently as he knows how. 

Sam and Cas talk for a little while after that, low voices that Dean allows to lull him as he sips at the dregs of his beer and scrapes the last bit of cinnamon sugar off his plate with the side of his fork. It’s good just to be able to hear them. The bunker’s been so quiet these past few weeks, so still. Having Cas here makes it into a home again. 

They’re all here. All safe. Dean kissed Cas, and Cas kissed him back, and Dean’s willing to bet that’s gonna happen again. 

A miracle. The kind hewn not because of divine intervention, but despite it. 

He’s right on the edge of drifting off when Sam finally stands up, taking all their dirty dishes to the sink and turning back to them all with a smile. “It’s really good to have you back home, Cas,” he says. 

There’s that word again. And maybe it’s the long day—the long few weeks, months, lifetime—but it has Dean’s eyes stinging hot again, a prickle that in his exhaustion he’s having a difficult time fighting back. 

He misses Cas’s answer but when he looks up again Sam is smiling at him from the doorway, giving him a little wink before he dips off down the hall. 

Dean would like to say he’s got no idea what that means. But out of the two of them, Sammy’s always been the smart brother, and it doesn’t take a genius to see the way Dean’s been mooning after Cas all night. 

All the last decade. 

The quiet of the kitchen draws around them like a blanket, and Dean blinks, slow. 

He knows Cas is looking at him before he even turns his head. The gaze is like a touch; tender, softly exploratory. Dean leans into all that blue and Cas catches his hand, holds it close, lifts it to his mouth. Kisses Dean’s battered knuckles. 

“I haven’t thanked you yet,” Cas says. His lips brush Dean’s skin as he speaks, right over forty years of layered scars. “For rescuing me.”

There is something like heat crowding up beneath Dean’s jaw. If Cas does that again, Dean might break apart. He wants him to. 

“Cas,” Dean says. Tremulous. He’d be mortified if Cas wasn’t looking at him like that: he’d lower his gaze if he thought he could make himself do it. “Of course I did. I…”

It gets stuck in his throat. 

He hates himself for a moment, a blinding twist of it. Cas deserves to hear it back. Cas deserves—he deserves so much. So much more than Dean can give him, grizzled and hardened as he is, with blood stained so deep down the cracks of his hands that there’s not gonna be any getting it out. So much more than someone who can’t say what they feel out loud without the heat of their past breathing down the back of their neck. 

But Cas just smiles at him. “You should get some rest,” he says. “It’s been quite the day.”

Dean can’t help the laugh that punches out of him, helpless and a little unsteady. He just nods. 

When Cas follows him to his bedroom, Dean doesn’t put up a fight. 

Maybe if he didn’t feel half dead where he stands, Dean might be more of an asshole about Cas presuming something that flays the skin back from Dean’s bones and is nevertheless completely true—but he’s barely able to keep his eyes open right now. 

He thinks if Cas left his view for even a moment this soon after getting him back, Dean would have a fucking breakdown. 

So he digs up a loose pair of sweats and the softest sleep shirt he has out of his dresser, and he presses them into Cas’s stomach, who takes them with slight surprise in the lift of his eyebrows. 

“You wanna put those on and, uh…” Dean tips his head toward the mattress, hoping that he doesn’t sound like he wants Cas’s answer to be  _ yes  _ too desperately. 

Cas’s brow smooths, the corners of his mouth lift slightly. He’s running his finger over the worn fabric of the shirt slowly, almost reverently. Because it’s Dean’s. Because Dean handed it to him. 

“Is there something wrong with what I have on now?” he asks. It’s solemn, but Dean can see the grin that he’s got tucked up all secret. 

“You ain’t ever getting in my bed with shoes on,” Dean says. Cas laughs, low and soft, and Dean didn’t mean it like that—not that he’s not interested, he’s  _ definitely  _ interested, it’s just, it’s late, and Dean sort of just wants to hold him, as pathetic as that is—

“I suppose I must, then,” Cas says. He shoots Dean one last smile for the road and turns around, already shrugging out of his coat. 

Dean swallows, throat suddenly dry. He likes the width of Cas’s shoulders pushing up against that dark suit. Likes it real well. 

Shaking his head, he forces himself around, too. Kicks off everything but his boxers and his t-shirt, and then, after a moment of hesitation, tugs the shirt off too. It’s stiff with fear-sweat, which is both a bad reminder and a worse smell.

He’s slipping into a fresh one, trying not to lift his arms too high and jostle the still-healing mess of his ribs, when he feels Cas come up behind him. 

Cas sets a hand in the dip of his waist, the shock-heat of his palm on Dean’s bare skin taking all the air away. He turns Dean around slowly to face him. 

In the lamplight, his eyes shine. “What happened here?”

Dean feels drunk with skin-on-skin contact, even just that little bit. His tongue is thick and heavy in his mouth as he says, “Werewolf. Got the jump on me.”

It’s a lie, and looking at Cas, he knows it. He is touching Dean in one of his most vulnerable places, one of those places that nobody has ever touched with such care; his fingers skim the curve of Dean’s last rib, where the claw marks end, and his palm brushes the softness of Dean’s stomach, and Dean has both hands wound up in the front of Cas’s shirt before he means to. 

“Dean,” Cas says. 

The truth tumbles out of Dean on an exhale. “I wanted it to happen,” he says. “To—to hurt.”

Dean almost wishes Cas looked angry at him, so he’d have something to hold onto. He just looks devastated instead. 

“Couldn’t feel anything for the longest time after you were gone,” Dean rasps. He sounds hollow as bone. “Just. Just anger, and pain like nothing else, and guilt—fuck, Cas, I’m so goddamn guilty. Everybody kept telling me it wasn’t my fault you were gone—”

“Listen to me,” Cas says. There’s a snap to his words, but the hand on Dean’s waist covets the skin it spans. “It  _ wasn’t  _ your fault. I chose my reality. You didn’t manipulate me, and you didn't force my hand, and I felt  _ joy  _ when I saved you, Dean. Nothing but joy, and love.”

His cheeks are wet now. He breathes as calmly as he can, shuffling closer to Cas. He opens his mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. 

“Dean,” says Cas again, so quiet. His other hand is on the back of Dean’s neck, fingertips in Dean’s hair. His gaze travels the plains of Dean’s face like skipping stones over a river. “You are very lucky you look like you’re about to pass out. Otherwise I would find it necessary to ‘give you hell’ about your lack of self worth.”

It’s very obvious that he’s trying to make the tone lighthearted once more, even though his voice wavers as he speaks and the tenderness with which he looks at Dean is almost unbearable. 

Dean loves him so much he’s gutted with it. 

“You’re one to talk,” Dean says. Breathes in. Out. “Getting—getting yourself killed for me every time I turn around.”

He is staring at the place where Cas’s pulse leaps, so human, in the hollow of his throat. He can’t look up, but Cas dips his chin down to meet his eyes anyway. 

“I meant what I said in the Empty, Dean Winchester,” Cas whispers. “I would do it a million times over.” 

Dean’s never let himself be loved like this. Dean’s never—nobody has ever wanted to. 

“Well don’t,” he says, and it’s too fierce, and he fucking means it. “You hear that, Cas? I don’t—I can’t—I don’t wanna be here without you, asshole.” 

“You don’t have to be,” Cas murmurs, drifting closer. “I promise.”

Dean thought it might be less like holding the sun in his hands to kiss Cas outside of the Empty’s leeching cold, but Dean thought wrong. There’s a fervency to everything Cas does: it bleeds through the hold he has on Dean, the intent with which his mouth moves. It’s a good damn kiss, but even if it wasn’t, Dean would feel it down to his toes simply by the sheer virtue of it having been bestowed by Cas in the first place. 

He ends up on the edge of the mattress with Cas in the cradle of his legs, face tipped up like he’s receiving sacrament. 

Cas kisses Dean’s forehead. It should feel mothering, juvenile; it shouldn’t wash Dean over like the gentlest tide. 

“I’ll watch over you,” Cas tells him. “I’ll watch over you as you dream.”

The lamplight sets him blazing gold, framing his face like a halo. Dean holds onto his hand. 

Dean holds on. 

**Author's Note:**

> this is the most coherent thing i’ve managed to write about That Episode and it doesn’t even skim the top of what i feel. supernatural brainrot has sunk its shiny claws into me. 
> 
> anyway! thanks so much for reading! i am on [twitter](https://twitter.com/cowboy_like_me_) where i cry a lot and also [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/danger-and-diatribes) which i don't know how to use and i'd love to talk to you <3


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